MOTHERS

'She, like all mothers, constantly casts out her thoughts, like fishing lines, towards her children, reminding herself of where they are, what they are doing, how they fare.'

Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet, p.260.

THE PROBLEM WITH FAMILY LIKENESS

'Vi loved her mother, but was too much like her not to get irritated after fifteen minutes.' 

Penelope Fitzgerald, Human Voices, p.104. 

MOTHERHOOD

'She stands back and surveys me and says only this.

Frankie.

But there is a birth, a childhood, a whole life buried in the word.'

Tim Lott, White City Blue, p.272.

PARENTAL LOVE

'Until you have a baby, her mother had said, you don't know what love is! Her mother volunteered this on the day of Lou's one and only wedding. - Oh, Lou wanted to say, go soak your head. After Lou brought forth Petie, she at once recalled her mother's words, forgave, and endorsed them.' 

Annie Dillard, The Maytrees, p.40. 

DEATH OF A PARENT

'I have often thought that the death of a parent is the one misfortune for which there is no compensation. Even when circumstances don't compound it. Even when others who love the child move quickly and smoothly to guard it and care for it. There is not any wisdom to be gained from the death of a parent. There are no memories of the parent that are not rendered painful by the death, no event surrounding the death that is redeemed by a single happy thought.'  

Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres, p.292. 

LOSING A MOTHER

'If there is anything more difficult or more real than the death of one's mother, I don't know what it is.'

Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres, p.54.

MOTHERS

'...the ten thousand little things every day that a woman kept thinking of, on account of children. Hardly even thinking, he thought to himself, as he pulled on his other sock. Practically automatic. Like breathing.' 

James Agee, A Death in the Family, p.27.